Back to Eden Garden Update

Several variety of cantaloupe are open-pollinated, making them great for organic gardening. Photo by J&J

I thought we would do a bit of an update on the Back to Eden Garden. I have been pretty busy keeping up with our new website, so it has been a while since I did one of these updates.

It has been a while since I really gave the garden some attention. The first thing I noticed was how well the mulch was doing in keeping the weeds down. Sure, some weeds had crept in, but when you compare the area that is mulched with the area that is not, the difference is dramatic. It was also good to see the bees buzzing around. There were some on the Cucumber and on the Tomatoes. However the bees were spending a lot of time on the grass (it has not been mowed in a while). That seems to be another reason to “grow food, not lawns” – the bees could be spending more attention pollinating food than grass.

Organic Garden: Garden Health

We are waiting for the Simpson Black Seeded Lettuce to go to seed. We are no longer eating from it. It has pretty little yellow daisy-looking flowers. The seed pods should come soon. We were really impressed by this lettuce – it did not bolt, as it were, until July – a testament to it being very heat tolerant.

Our Beefsteak Tomato and Cucumber are both fruiting. The Hales Best Cantaloupe has flowered. The Picnic Watermelon and Big Max pumpkin are setting buds. The Purple Basil is slowly growing, but smells fantastic. Of these, the Big Max Pumpkin and the Cucumber are the most amazing to look at – the Big Max’s foliage is just humongous and the Cucumber is claiming a large portion of the East facing fence and the surrounding ground.

Beefsteak tomatoes are a classic heirloom tomato. These ones have just enjoyed a nice rain. Photo by J&J.

Planting our Vegetable Seeds

With our first frost date about 120 days away, it was time to get in some long-growing crops for a late harvest. We also planted a few others that we might be able to get another planting in after we get the lettuce out of the way. Hopefully we can sneak in a few other cool crops later in the year as well. Today we planted:

Waltham Butternut Squash

Conneticut Field Pumpkin

Clemson Spineless 80 Okra

Mississippi Purple Cowpea

Long Thin Cayenne Pepper

All of these are open-pollinated heirloom varieties that we purchased from either Baker Creek or Victory Seeds. We will save seed from anything we can so we can start producing these from our own homegrown seed stock.

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